What Type of Listicle Can Help You Have A Great Relationship?
Ans: A deleted one, preferably one that never made it past the draft stage.
One of the quotes that pervade the psyche of the black community is this…
“If you want to hide something from a black person, put it in a book”
The reason why it exists is that there was a time when it was illegal for black people to learn how to read and write. Over the years though, the quote took on a different meaning. A meaning that also contributes to the internalized self-hate that plagues the black community.
The quote now means that black people don’t like reading. But the decline in reading is not a problem localized to the black community alone. So this quote is more like…
“If you want to hide something from most people, put it in a book”
People don’t read, writers know this, so, inventions have to be made in an attempt for the writing discipline to remain relevant.
Listicles, readers’ digests, topics for dummies, audio reads, … are some of the many inventions that writers have come up with to help deliver their messages to the public while keeping the public interested.
But there is a reason why writing is an art. There is a reason why writers structure their prose the way they do. For those who want you to read their work, it is an attempt to channel emotions in their purest form. — from feeling onto the canvas.
That is why I am always fascinated by some writers and the way they write. They help you understand something deeply. They make you feel what they are feeling. It's amazing.
Writers who generally stay away from these quick fixes to the dwindling reading habits of the public do this because they must. They recognize the need to express emotions as purely as they can get them.
They recognize that a listicle is not always the best solution especially when it comes to discussing serious things such as relationships.
Then there are writers who are more interested in parting you with your dollar and won’t care about how well they structure their content and ideas beyond the basic grammar and flow of their writing.
Their sentences are short and straight to the point. Several ideas (touch-points) are crammed into one article to compensate for the shallow reasoning and fallacy-filled ideas that expose their biases paraded as absolute statements.
They need you to view them as authority figures. So they will make sure their articles are borderline domineering in the statements they state as facts backed by research and experience.
What is the fastest, economically effective, and simplest way to do this? — Listicles.
They will therefore feel the need to bundle up the most complex issues of human existence into these quick fix inventions such as listicles. They do this because they know how appealing these subjects are to you.
Listicles could be useful for finding gift ideas but every day is not Christmas and people care more about things like money and relationships than they do about holidays.
These writers know this too. They know that if they can combine the appeal of a listicle with the appeal of these core topics, they will maximize their reads, have evergreen content, and remain relevant longer while making money from this.
What these writers don’t do however is care about you as much as they care about their success. Some think they do, actually, most really want to. But they don’t. It's not a fault of their own. It's partly because these inventions have limitations of their own.
These writers probably do not care whether their advice works for you or not. All they care about for sure though is hitting their KPIs or any other form of goal that has little if anything to do with you but has everything to do with them.
And I am sure that most of them mean well. Somewhere deep down, they hope that their listicle advice on complex issues works for you. They hope. But that hope is not as much as the hope for their own success.
A relationship is only as strong as its weakest flaw
You must understand that relationships are very fragile and as much as the feelings are quite the same, the experiences and situations that get you to those feelings are never the same even if they might appear so.
On the macro scale, sure they will look the same. For instance, many relationships end because of poor communication between people but when you look at what “poor communication” looks like in every relationship, there are a lot of differences.
Therefore if you expect to find answers in a listicle about why your relationship is failing, you are more likely to end up more miserable and wrecking the relationship more.
What listicles will do for you is blind you to the real problem as they spread your attention across several possibilities.
What I know about failing relationships is that if you attempt to fix something that is not the reason for the failure, the person involved will be more hurt and angered by your sincere efforts. This will damage your relationship more.
Anyone idea that is shallowly mentioned in a listicle can ruin a great relationship but if you want to troubleshoot your relationships using these listicles, then that’s a really sad resolution on your part. It never ends well.
Even getting into relationships still works the same way. If the listicle is about how men can know whether a certain woman is interested in them, this too will open up several possibilities of miscommunication.
Listicles will blind you to the signs that the person you are interested in might be showing you and they’ll make you misread things. Get one thing wrong and a red flag counter is started on your a**.
Following these cookie-cutter solutions will make your relationships lifeless and animated as you will always be thinking about signs meaning what. You will approach your relationships like a listicle causing you and your love just a lot of pain.
I think that navigating relationships is a lot more complicated and cannot be effectively captured by generalized solutions or walkthroughs. — Especially the way they are laid out in listicles.
And you would think that people recognize this and actually take this listicle advice with caution. But we all know how terrible we all are at following advice that pushes us to the side we do not want.
However shallow and terrible listicle advice is, if it offers any hope, we badly want it to be true and therefore we follow it blindly.
If a listicle details 5 ways to know that she's interested in me, if my observations check off all those points, it will be much harder for me to see any other sign that she isn’t.
Often times people approach relationships with these generalized shallow points of view, hoping that they are right and they find themselves in much worse places than they were before.
I think each relationship is unique and should be treated as such.
For the most part, if two people feel something for each other, sooner or later those emotions find harmony and bring the people involved together if they both embrace them. I do not think a listicle is needed to identify them in others or worse still, to find strategies that induce them in others. The latter is manipulation while the former is creepy.
People are not stupid. They’ll always know if you are interested in them and so will you. If you have doubts and crippling reservations, it's because you have things that you need to work on within yourself first.
Therefore instead of looking for a listicle, maybe go read more helpful literature, go to therapy to repair your sense of self-worth, and so on. Do not try to look for signs in listicles because they will hurt you and the person you love.
The love of your life is not going anywhere. What is meant to be will be. These listicles you seek push you into acting on unformed ideas. Should your love think that you are slow and decide to fall for another person, you will be fine. Trust me. You will meet another love of your life.
People are special and one of the reasons for that is because everyone gets to exercise their will in navigating the world. This creates a beautiful spectrum of experiences.
Seeking cookie-cutter solutions and signs on the internet on how to navigate your relationships with others is something similar to imposing your will onto others. That never ends well. You do not want to have a relationship built on another person’s oppressed will. Their will to live will eventually be free again, and it will hurt both of you much worse so much so that you will wish you never met.
Conclusion
Listicles have their place in the writing world. They can be very useful in knowing which kind of gifts you can shop for events, or what kind of clothes to wear at particular times and so many other shallow definites.
But when it comes to complex issues that do not have definite ways of navigation, listicles and the advice therein not only fall apart but oftentimes hurt people searching for answers in the process.
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